Steven Fletcher had a long road from the accident that paralyzed him to the House of Commons

After the 1996 highway accident that left him permanently paralyzed from the neck down, there were days when Steven Fletcher lay in his hospital bed, wishing he could die. His thoughts had turned to suicide.

Steven Fletcher quoted the Victorian poem, Invictus, as the inspiration for his two “historic” new bills on assisted suicide: “I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul,” he said.

The first of the new bills is guided by that sense of self-determination.

“It empowers people to make the best decision for themselves, based on their own morals and ethics, while ensuring that there is no pressure on that person from society, family, friends or the institution they are in, to seek assisted suicide,” he said.

“He was pinned down, kept in place by the weight of his flesh, flesh that he could not feel, flesh that would not move, flesh that refused to serve him, but would not let go of him,” writes Linda McIntosh, in her 2008 biography of Mr. Fletcher, who after his accident went on to become a Winnipeg MP. “He was acutely aware that his head and neck were sources of great, sometimes almost unbearable pain, yet pain that he had no choice but to bear.” No choice, in part because suicide was not an option.

Mr. Fletcher had not the means; he could not move.

And doctors could not — still cannot — assist in suicide; that’s not their job. But on Thursday, Mr. Fletcher introduced in the House of Commons two private members’ bills directly related to assisted suicide, or “death with dignity,” the term that he prefers. If passed, one bill would allow doctors in Canada to help patients end their lives under certain conditions and limited circumstances, and the second would set up a system to monitor doctor-assisted suicide.

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Mr. Fletcher was a strapping young engineer — just 23 years old — and heading back to work at a gold mine north of Winnipeg when his car struck a moose. The moose was large. It flew through the car’s windshield, hit the back seat, bounced over Mr. Fletcher, and landed outside. Mr. Fletcher was thrown from the vehicle and into a ditch, his spine crushed, nerves irreparably damaged, muscles unresponsive.

An avid outdoorsman, naturalist and former champion kayaker, Mr. Fletcher spent weeks incubated and gasping for breath in a Winnipeg hospital, a machine sucking mucous from his lungs every hour of every day.

It wasn’t only physical pain he suffered. There was trauma at having lost the use of his arms and legs. The recognition that henceforth, he’d require assistance to change his clothes, to bathe, to empty his bowels. Brutal for anyone, let alone a rugged individualist whose career was just taking flight, a career that would have sent him all over world. Mining, engineering were in his blood. Mr. Fletcher was born in Brazil; his father, a mining engineer, worked there. His grandfather, his great grandfather: Both engineers.

Mr. Fletcher had fight in him. He pushed on. He overcame his depression and he learned to cope with his profound disability. Indeed, he thrived.

In June 2004, he became Canada’s first quadriplegic Member of Parliament, having won a tough Conservative Party of Canada nomination battle in the Winnipeg riding of Charleswood – St. James – Assiniboia, and then defeating Liberal party candidate and former Winnipeg mayor Glen Murray in the federal election. Mr. Fletcher has been re-elected three times since.

Along the way, he’s become an advocate for assisted suicide. Were it available when he lay in hospital, he might have reached for it, he says.

In a opinion piece published in the National Post five years ago, Mr. Fletcher wrote that he does “not want to be forced to live in a hell because the law does not take into account my ‘unique’ circumstances or because someone imposed their values on the meaning of life on me.”

Mr. Fletcher acknowledged in an interview Thursday that had doctor-assisted suicide been an option after his 1996 car accident, he would have considered signing up and checking out. At the very least, he said, he “would have felt more comfortable, having some control over the possible outcomes. I might have [requested an assisted suicide] if my situation had gone the other way. I’d much rather have died peacefully than drown [on mucous]. But I got better.”

He’s had setbacks, to be sure. In 2012, doctors discovered that a metal rod inserted under his chin to stabilize his neck had dislodged. Mr. Fletcher had just earlier been named minister of state for transport; before going into surgery, he says, he told his doctors that if his cognitive abilities should be impaired, “just walk away from the table and don’t worry about sewing me up. I would not want to live.”

He survived, again. “My neck will last forever now,” he said Thursday.

But political fortunes rise and fall; Mr. Fletcher lost his junior cabinet post. He took to Twitter after getting turfed last year, joking that he’d rather have left “in the traditional way — with a sex scandal!”

He still laughs about it, but there’s perhaps a trace of bitterness. He’s the longest serving member of the Commons treasury committee, he notes with pride. And now he has two private members’ bills, on matters he’s had reasons to consider far more closely than most of his colleagues. Does he have support in caucus? “All I’m asking is that people listen to the debate,” says Mr. Fletcher, “and then decide.”